Free Republic

Thousands Of Layoffs Coming After Buffett Merges Heinz With Kraft, Creating 5th Largest Food Company In The World Another day, another mega-M&A deal taking advantage of abnormally low bond rates, this time however not involving biotechs or a specialty pharma seeking to purchase a debt-free balance sheet, but one involving the Oracle of Omaha himself, and his Heinz investment, which will merge with Kraft Foods whose market cap was over $40 billion this morning on the news of the merger, and create the third largest food and beverage company in the US, and 5th largest in the world. And while...

<p>WASHINGTON -- Sensitive national-security information was mistakenly released by the Treasury Department to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, but no criminal statutes were violated, records show.</p> <p>Mr. O'Neill drew on some of the material -- part of a cache of 19,000 documents -- for a memoir released in January that was critical of President Bush. When a document stamped "Secret" was displayed on a CBS "60 Minutes" episode concerning the book, the Treasury Department sought an investigation.</p>

US Secretary of State Adivses Russian Counterpart Not To Take US President's Words At Face Value Though it went entirely unnoticed in the Western press, all major Russian news outlets – RIA Novosti, Sputnik, RT, and others – were only too happy to report on what US Secretary of State John Kerry said last week to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in private: “Just ignore Obama’s statements.” According to Mr. Lavrov, John Kerry advised him not to pay too much attention to the US President’s harsh rhetoric directed toward his state. As recently as September, during his speech to...

Oakland restaurant Conflict Kitchen has closed until further notice after receiving a letter containing death threats, according to a post on its Facebook page... Conflict Kitchen recently has been the focus of controversy over its serving of Palestinian food with anti-Israel messages on the food wrappers.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is urging consumers to boycott Burger King over reports that the fast food chain is eyeing a tax-cutting move to Canada. Brown, an outspoken corporate critic, said people hankering for a burger should head to Wendy’s or White Castle, two Ohio-based chains that aren’t looking to shrink their tax bill via a so-called “corporate inversion.” “Burger King’s decision to abandon the United States means consumers should turn to Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers or White Castle sliders,” he said in a statement. “Burger King has always said ‘Have it Your Way’; well my way is to support...

Comrades, there are wreckers in our midst. The industrialist reactionaries at Burger King have declared their intention to abandon the struggle and join the ranks of the enemy in rightist Canada. That’s right. The traitorous corporation Burger King plans to take advantage of the fact that America’s English-speaking neighbor to the north maintains the second-lowest corporate tax rate of any G-7 nation. How dare they? “The iconic American fast-food brand is in talks to buy coffee-and-donuts chain Tim Hortons and move its headquarters to Canada,” Forbes reported. If concluded, this deal would create the world’s third-largest restaurant company and allow...

The new owners of H.J. Heinz Co. have offered buyouts to all workers in Pittsburgh, where the ketchup-and-food giant has been based for decades, but insist the offer doesn’t signal a plan to move the company’s headquarters. Instead, Heinz officials said the buyout is being offered because the new owners Berkshire Hathaway and Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital recognize the company’s new culture might not be “the perfect fit” for longtime Pittsburgh-based employees. Heinz officials said any workers who quit will be replaced, leaving the company with the same number of workers in Pittsburgh. …

Add Arnold Waldo of Carrick to the list of people disappointed with recent changes being made at the H.J. Heinz Co. Mr. Waldo, 82, who retired from the Pittsburgh food company in 1985, received a letter in late November notifying him that Heinz was reducing its contribution to a retiree reimbursement account used to cover certain medical expenses, such as co-pays for doctor visits and health insurance premiums. "Beginning in 2014, Heinz will contribute $1,093 per year, per household to your RRA," the letter dated Nov. 21 said. The cut, not the first to the retiree benefit, takes the level...

Yesterday in this space, the focus was on the latest wrinkle in the Left's developing strategy for dealing with dissent. It began with using the IRS regulatory power to suppress conservative, Tea Party and evangelical dissenters. The new wrinkle is expanding the tax agency's activity to impose new restrictions on permissible activities of 501(C)(4) nonprofit advocacy groups and to require reporting the names of donors and the amounts they contributed. The avowed purpose of these initiatives is to put an end to what is known throughout the politically correct precincts of the mainstream media as “dark money.”Dark money is funding...

H.J. Heinz Co. is closing three plants in North America and cutting 1,350 jobs in an effort to operate more efficiently. The food maker said Thursday that it will close facilities in two states and Canada over the next six to eight months. The cuts total 200 jobs in Florence, S.C., 410 jobs in Pocatello, Idaho and 740 employees in Leamington, Ontario, in Canada. …

McDonald’s has lost its taste for Heinz ketchup. The fast-food giant said in a statement Friday that it is cutting ties with the condiment company after 40 years due to management changes there. A former Burger King CEO became head of Heinz in June after the company was bought by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital. 3G, a Brazilian investment firm, also controls Burger King. The impact of the change may be tasted more overseas. In the U.S., McDonald’s uses Heinz products only in Pittsburgh and Minneapolis restaurants. …

PITTSBURGH - H.J. Heinz Co, the world's largest ketchup maker, said on Tuesday it plans to eliminate 600 jobs across North America.

BOSTON (AP) — Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and heir to a ketchup company fortune, was hospitalized in critical but stable condition Monday, a day after showing symptoms consistent with a seizure, a person in close contact with the family said.

Teresa Heinz Kerry was in critical but stable condition at a Boston hospital after being transferred there from a hospital in Nantucket, where she and husband Secretary of State John Kerry were vacationing. A family spokesman said that Heinz Kerry was transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital from Nantucket Cottage Hospital, where she was taken by ambulance earlier today.

Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, was taken to a hospital on Nantucket this afternoon, according to a person close to the family, Boston.com reports.

The shocking minutes relating to President Putin’s meeting this past week with US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal the Russian leaders “extreme outrage” over the Obama regimes continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto in the face of a growing “bee apocalypse” that the Kremlin warns “will most certainly” lead to world war. According to these minutes, released in the Kremlin today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation (MNRE), Putin was so incensed over the Obama regimes refusal to discuss this grave matter that he refused for three...

Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital is sliding the chief executive of Burger King Worldwide Inc. (BKW), which it currently controls, into the same role at H.J. Heinz Co. (HNZ) once 3G and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB) complete their $23 billion buyout of the ketchup maker. Bernardo Hees will replace Heinz CEO William Johnson, who has led the ketchup-maker for 15 years and turned it into more of a global food company by selling ketchup and other Heinz's products all across the world. 3G and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in February teamed up to buy Heinz for $72.50 a share...

You do know that. I love our Secretary, but Teresa Heinz Kerry is another woman of courage who has been just a dear friend and supporter to me for a very long time, and it is just a thrill to have you both in this role. Congratulations, and thank you.

Billionaire Warren Buffett loves Heinz ketchup with his hash browns so much that he is driving Heinz into junk status. Maybe he actually likes Hunts Ketchup better. His love of ketchup and hash browns is transforming H.J. Heinz Co. into the most-leveraged food maker in America. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and 3G Capital Inc.’s $2 billion acquisition of Heinz may double the company’s total debt to five times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to Fitch Ratings, the highest of any comparable food company. The cost to protect Heinz’s debt from losses soared to a record after the...

<p>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of a Swiss trading account that allegedly made a series of "highly suspicious" trades reaping about $1.7 million ahead of the blockbuster sale of H.J. Heinz Co.</p> <p>The regulator's move came one day after Heinz said it was selling itself for $23 billion to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital in one of the biggest food-industry acquisitions ever.</p>